Innovators

MESSAGE from the DIRECTOR

Published April 2024

Dear SDSC Staff, Collaborators, Partners and All Friends:

Since my last message, we have begun the final quarter of the academic year, which has flown by with the many activities going on at SDSC.

Two activities that I would like to recall are AI-themed events, 5NRP and FABRIC KNIT 8, highlighting future-forward cyber capabilities for research and education communities. These overlapping workshops were co-located at UC San Diego last month, with some joint programming.

Keynote speaker U.S. National Science Foundation Director Katie Antypas delivered the opening address. Workshop activities included hands-on tutorials for NRP, Expanse and Voyager—including explanations of the commonalities and differences between these three supercomputers. Additionally, 5NRP spotlighted the “CENIC AIR” initiative—a collaboration between CENIC and SDSC to bring AI resources for education to the California State University (CSU) system and others. This effort is aimed at advancing AI education across the U.S. by reducing the total cost of ownership of AI infrastructure.

In terms of CENIC, our Chief Data Science Officer İlkay Altıntaş was recognized with its 2024 Christine Haska Distinguished Service Award. The honor is a tribute to her lengthy list of contributions to the data science research and education community. You can read more about this below under Researcher Spotlight.

Additionally, CENIC also recognized the Technology Infrastructure for Data Exploration Project, or TIDE, with a 2024 Innovations in Networking Award for Equitable Access to Cyberinfrastructure (CI).

TIDE is a partnership between SDSC and SDSU, and it extends the CENIC AI Resource (CENIC-AIR) to three additional CSU campuses: CSU San Bernardino, Cal Poly Humboldt and CSU Stanislaus. More can be learned about this award and project in an article under News Highlights. In fact, I would encourage you to note all of the articles under this section of our newsletter because they highlight some of the important impacts of SDSC’s work.

Thank you for your continued interest in SDSC. I look forward to sharing my next message with you in our June issue of Innovators.

Best wishes,
Frank Würthwein
SDSC Director